This is currently my primary frustration with Connect: complete opaqueness regarding instances.

I understand that one design philosophy might argue that instances shouldn’t matter, so why show it at all. But it does matter, especially on All, and in comments. I think at the current and near-term state of development, obscuring instances creates more confusion than it alleviates.

• In this example, I have no idea what community this is. Where is “here”? “General” is a super broad category (does a multi-community even make sense for this type of community name?). Is this /c/general for a general purpose instance, or /c/general of an instance dedicated to a very specific topic? Is that instance worth checking out? Who knows?
• Is this an instance I’m subscribed to yet?
• is this the same /c/general I was in last time with a moderation policy and moderators I didn’t like, or a new one?
• Is my instance defederated from seal_of_approval and will they receive my message? Who knows?
• Are most responders coming from lemmy.world, from sketchy instances loaded with bots or is there good traction from smaller instances? Is there instance brigading going on?
• Is this an impersonator of seal_of_approval?
• is this a specific community that spams a lot and I should block it?
• What moderation rules apply to this instance?

I can’t block entire instances myself…

I realize that a lot of these problems have some sort of workaround by drilling down into community details and profiles. Ain’t nobody have time for that.

I realize that specific UI solutions could be introduced to tackle each of these problems individually in a user-friendly manner. But we’re not there and who knows when we will get there.